Nigel P. Daly’s recent article, “Taiwan wants bilingual, artificial intelligence-ready graduates — but tests for yesteryear,” (June 3, page 12) highlighted a challenge at the heart of Taiwan’s education system. We are asking schools to cultivate creative, critical thinkers for an AI-driven global economy, yet many of the incentives created by our highest-stakes examinations still favor knowledge recall and predetermined answers.
This mismatch is often framed as a question of standards. However, the challenge facing Taiwan is not maintaining rigor in the age of AI. The challenge is redefining it.
For decades, academic rigor in language education has been associated with the accurate recall of grammar rules, translation of isolated sentences and production of formulaic written responses. These skills still have value, but they are no longer sufficient. Many of the routine language tasks that once required significant human effort can now be performed by AI with remarkable speed and accuracy.
If our understanding of rigor remains anchored to skills that technology increasingly handles well, we risk preparing students for a world that no longer exists.
In an AI-mediated world, the premium shifts from information retrieval to human judgement. Students must learn not only how to communicate effectively, but also how to evaluate information, question assumptions and determine whether AI-generated content is accurate, appropriate and useful for a particular audience and purpose.
Language classrooms are uniquely positioned to develop these capabilities. When communicative language teaching approaches are adopted, the focus moves beyond learning about English and toward using English to solve problems, exchange ideas and engage with different perspectives.
True rigor is visible when students rephrase ideas after misunderstandings, defend opinions with evidence and collaborate on solutions — demanding tasks requiring flexibility, judgment, and real-time decisionmaking that cannot be automated or memorized.
Fortunately, Taiwan does not need to invent this model from scratch. Through the Ministry of Education’s BEST initiative, the Language Training & Testing Center has already begun exploring ways to align English assessment with the communicative demands of higher education and professional life. The BEST Test of English Proficiency is one example of how Taiwan is moving beyond assessments that focus primarily on knowledge about language toward evaluating how effectively learners can use English in meaningful contexts. It demonstrates that communicative competence and academic rigor are not competing goals.
The challenge is scale. Reforming major entrance examinations requires time, research, and political consensus, but students cannot wait for assessment systems to catch up with the demands of future workplaces.
A practical way to accelerate change is through teacher development. Educators need support to design communicative learning experiences, use formative assessment effectively and help students develop the judgment needed to work alongside AI. This is not about lowering standards, but aligning them with future realities.
Taiwan has invested heavily in bilingual education and digital infrastructure. The next challenge is turning these investments into meaningful classroom learning. If Taiwan hopes to lead an AI-driven world, cultivating human judgement might become one of the most important educational investments we make.
Daniel Eyrich is director of English studies at CenYing English in Keelung and has more than 15 years of experience in English language teaching, assessment and teacher development in Taiwan.
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